Does faith help literacy?

The world’s first radar breast imaging system developed at Bristol University that could revolutionise the way women are scanned for breast cancer, is being trialled at North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT). Professor Alan Preece and Dr Ian Craddock from the University of Bristol have been working for a number of years to develop a

New research at Goldsmiths will set about answering that question by looking at how faith impacts upon becoming literate, in particular when families move to a new country and need to learn a new language.

Professor Eve Gregory from the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, together with Dr John Jessel, Dr Charmian Kenner, Dr Vally Lytra and Mahera Ruby, has just been awarded £620,000 by the ESRC to examine children’s participation in faith literacy activities.

The three year project will take place in London with twelve families from four faiths. These are: West African Pentecostalist; Tamil Hindu; Bangladeshi Muslim; and Polish Catholic. These faiths are highly significant in the lives of many newcomers who have migrated to London.

The research aims to develop collaborative ethnography, whereby both children and older members of each faith will participate in data collection and analysis. Over the three years, the research will: build up a detailed picture of language and literacy practices in each setting; analyse ways in which children aged between 5 and 12 go about learning in formal and informal contexts; investigate the change in faith literacy practices over time through an intergenerational book making activity; and examine the importance of faith literacies in children’s everyday lives.

The research will culminate in a joint event to celebrate children’s faith literacies across all groups and an international conference for wider dissemination of findings.

To make children happier, we may need to encourage them to develop a strong sense of personal worth, according to Dr. Mark Holder from the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues Dr. Ben Coleman and Judi Wallace. Their research shows that children who feel that their lives have meaning and value and

Attending a high quality pre-school followed by an academically effective primary school gives a significant boost to children’s development. These are the findings of a new study which shows that a stimulating early years home-learning environment also provides a sound foundation on which these experiences build. The Effective Pre-school and Primary Education Project (EPPE 3-11)

There are many people who do not believe in god and do not follow any religion. In fact the trend of people who do not follow religion is growing rapidly. Earlier it was only the youth who turned atheist in their prime time and later on turned out to be devout Christian after marriage and

A recent study appearing in the November issue of Journal of American Geriatrics Society revealed that centenarian offspring (children of parents who lived to be at least 97 years old) retain important cardiovascular advantages from their parents compared to a similarly-aged cohort. The study is the first to assess the health of centenarian offspring over

Parents of children with intellectual disabilities have long been frustrated by IQ testing that tells them little to nothing about their children’s long-term learning potential. That’s because the tests are scored according to the mean performance of children without disabilities, so the raw scores of many intellectually disabled children are converted to the lowest normalized